Flexibility versus 'Power' tradeoff

[Roman]

I was thinking about what rolling system where you roll stats in order would be equivalent power-wise to the 4d6 drop the lowest assign as desired rolling system. I think it would have to be slightly more powerful than merely 4d6 drop the lowest in order, so as to account for the loss of flexibility and 'optimisation potential' for the player, assuming I want to preserve the same level of power. The question then becomes, just how much extra 'power' is the loss of flexibility worth...

Indeed, this line of thought then led me to consider similar issues with feats as class abilities. An ability to select any feat the character qualifies for, is better than merely being assigned a feat, but by how much is questionable.

Did anybody do any quantitative analysis of the value of flexibility?

 

[maggot]

The problem with 4d6 in order is that if you want to be a fighter, and your first roll is 7, you are out of luck. If you don't prechoose your class and race, rolling 4d6 in order isn't really any different than arranging because you can just choose a race/class combo that optimizes whatever you rolled.

That said, most people won't dump stat Con. So if you roll a 7 for con, you end up with a character most people wouldn't want to play.

In general, this rolling system only works with players than don't mind playing whatever the dice say. You could also come up with no one with enough wisdom to play a competent cleric.

Also long as you and your group are all fine with that, I don't know that you need to change anything.

 

[Roman]

I think 4d6 drop the lowest in order, is weaker even in cases where the race and class are selected only after the ability scores are rolled. Sure, the player may be happy to play any class, but the highest and next highest stats might not be in stats that synchronize well with each other for the benefit of a given class and as you point out the Constitution score is very important for all classes.

Assuming the class is selected on the basis of the highest ability score, the second highest ability score has a 80% chance of not being the second most important ability score for the class. Furthermore, it has 60% chance of not being second or third most important, 40% chance of not being the second, third or fourth most important and 20% chance of being the least important ability score for the class.

Hmm... what is the expected spread between the highest and second highest scores on 4d6 drop the lowest (and just for the sake of comparison on 3d6)?

 

[Aaron L]

No increase in power is worth the sacrifice of character flexibility. I want to play what I want to play, and it doesn't matter how powerful a Fighter I am "allowed" to play if what want to play is a Wizard.

 

[Roman]

Of course, Alaron L, but I am looking at this from a more theoretical perspective of the player being neutral to the class to be played, or rather, I would like to know the power tradeoff between being given a feature and between being able to choose a feature (such as assigning ability score rolls freely or in order), not the preference tradeoff.

 

[Hypersmurf]

A few systems I've seen to try to retain the 'organic' feel of roll-in-order without completely removing flexibility:

Roll seven 4d6 rolls and remove the highest; the other six are in order, but the player can swap the 'spare' roll for one of the six.

Roll six 4d6 rolls in order, and swap any two.

Roll six 4d6 rolls in order, and roll 1d6 or 2d6 to grant a 'pool' of bonus points that can be added to those scores (to a max of 18).

And there's always Method V from 1E Unearthed Arcana

One really interesting system I saw was nemmerle's 'Stat Draft' system. I may get some details wrong, but from memory... let's say there are five players. 4d6 are rolled seven times (6 ability scores plus 1), five times, to give a matrix of five lines of scores - Str, Dex, Con, Int, Wis, Cha, and Wild. The players each, in order, select one score. So player 1 might choose the 17 Dex, player 2 chooses the 13 Int, player 3 chooses the 16 Wild, and so on.

Once all five players have picked, the second round begins... with players choosing in reverse order of the abilities picked in the first round. So player 2, who picked a 13 in round 1, chooses before player 3 (16) and player 1 (17). Proceed until all players have six ability scores (where a Wild can go anywhere, but the others are fixed).

Repeat the process so that all players have two sets; they pick the one they like the most. It sounded like fun.

One other system I heard described, but I can't remember many details, involved replacing the dice with cards. The DM would shuffle a bunch of playing cards, and deal them out to each player. The players could then arrange their cards - black for physical stats, red for mental stats - or trade cards with other players.

So if the player who wanted to play a fighter had a bunch of red cards, he might be able to trade them with someone who had more black cards than he needed. If someone had two black tens to put in Str, for a total of 20, 2 points would be wasted (max 18)... so he might give one to someone else in exchange for a black 8.

Or something like that. It sounded interesting, but it was a while ago I read it...

Edit - hmm, doing some experiments, it looks like four hands of 13 cards, discard one, allow trading, picture cards worth 10 points, makes for perfectly workable characters in most cases... and it's reasonably elegant given that it uses the whole deck for a standard four-person party. For non-standard sizes, it's not quite so nice.

Totals tend to sit in the 70-95 range (before discard or trading), though there's the occasional anomaly where one player gets 110 and another gets 60. I guess it would be easy enough to institute a rule along the lines of "If you get dealt under 70, you can request a redeal". (In a sample of 50 4-person deals, 14 had someone under 70; 24 had someone under 73. Even if you had to deal three hands to ensure everyone was over 72, it wouldn't take too long...)

-Hyp.